The government of Macedonia has struck an agreement with Greece to change the country’s name, bringing an end to a long-running dispute between the two nations.

Greece has long objected to the use of the name Macedonia because it was shared by the ancient Greek kingdom ruled by Alexander of Macedon, and is also used by an adjacent Greek region.

As a result of Greece’s objections Macedonia was only admitted to the UN under the provisional name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia after it gained its independence in 1991 from the break-up of Yugoslavia.

This is one of those issues I have a strong opinion on despite not being aware of the issue five minutes ago.

Like, this is so stupid. Like, "we won't let you into our super cool club because we don't like your name" stupid. I guess the EU was doomed to failure from the beginning if we can assume that all of it's member states are bratty, petty children like Greece. Like, if you really believe that the EU is a mutually beneficial trade union, are you really going to block entry to a neighboring country over who can claim ownership of a 2500-year-dead dictator? At least Macedonia is willing to be the bigger country in the continent and change it's name so it can appease the angry infant.

It's infuriating, isn't it? I'm not sure if there's a way to frame it to see it as anything more than petty. I think the only reason Greece would do that is because of their status in the EU (in that they're already in the EU, so they're kinda OG).

Russia doesn't demand the US rename any of their Saint Petersburgs. Ukraine doesn't demand the US renames their Odessas. Georgia the Country doesn't demand they rename Georgia the State.

When exchange rates between countries were forever frozen with the introduction of the Euro, countries that were doing well continued to do well and countries that struggled continued to struggle. More than that, there was no longer any currency flows to hide behind: an orange didn't cost X Drachmas and Y Deutschemarks, it cost Z euros and while Z might be higher in Cologne than Athens, there was no advantage from a cheap Drachma to sell oranges for expensive Deutschmarks. Strong manufacturing operations in Hanover could no longer be undercut by scrappy outfits from Pesaro. So trade protectionism needed to come from somewhere else.

Greece is already in the shitter. Macedonia is not. Macedonia would like to join the Grand Experiment and when they do, their place in the sky will be frozen forever (theoretically). So it behooves the Greeks to keep them out until their economy is in the shitter so that they can still compete against Macedonia (among others).

Greece, of course, is already a member of the EU. And they've been on a severe austerity budget from the rest of the EU (IE Germany). And it's been working. But they're about to need more money.

And dollars to donuts, Merkel told Tsipras to get out of the way in exchange for favorable treatment, and Tsipras is willing to go for it despite a challenge from his own 'winger adversaries, and it all boils down to who can crack more boons out of Germany and France using whatever means necessary.

So yeah. It makes Greece look petty AF. But you have to keep in mind that the Euro kinda made them a vassal state of Germany 20 years ago and they're starting to get bitchy about it.

...and now you've found the problem at the heart of the European Union.

There's a lot of disagreement about this. But fundamentally, the EU is trying economically to be one country while legislatively it's a whole bunch of member states. And while, say, the United States of America can take money from California to pay for welfare programs in Alabama, the EU cannot take money from France to pay for welfare programs in Sardinia. More than that, Sardinia can pass laws about who gets welfare and nobody in France can say boo about it... but if Sardinia passes laws about price floors on tuna the EU can overrule them and shut 'em down. And by "the EU" we mean "unelected bureaucrats in Brussels that are de facto immune from recall or election by the people they govern."

It could all work out. It could continue to be groovy. I don't know if you've seen the James Bond movie Goldfinger, but the core premise is an evil billionaire tries to irradiate all the gold held at Fort Knox, thereby radically increasing the value of gold, impoverishing the United States, making himself crazy rich because of all the gold he owns and plunging the world into chaos as there is no longer any backing behind the world's currency. Goldfinger came out in 1964. In 1971 the United States said that the dollar was no longer convertible to gold, effectively doing everything Auric Goldfinger intended without nukes or spies... and this is the first time you've heard of it.

So we can make all sorts of dire prognostications. We can make all sorts of utopian predictions. But nobody knows what happens if somebody leaves the Euro. Current odds are as soon as one country leaves everyone else will be gone by sundown and then who knows what happens... but it's not like we have experience with this.

I also reckon that there's no way the rest of the EU can (or would be willing to) help Greece into a better place?

The way you describe it, it sounds like a bunch of people from different walks of life renting an apartment together. They're all doing their own thing in there, but they're all responsible for paying the rent. I guess they kind of agree to do so each at their capacity, so none sees a reason to help each other into better economic conditions (say, for the CEO of a growing startup to give the recently-homeless guy a job).

The way you describe it, it sounds like a bunch of people from different walks of life renting an apartment together.

A better way to look at is as a bunch of feudal states that have been engaged in continuous warfare for millennia deciding they'll let the bank manager tell them what to do. It never would have happened without the Marshall Plan, whereby a bunch of New Deal American democrats chose to remake Western Europe in their own image. American influences replaced a lot of the Hapsburg shit but at the end of the day, Europe has not been a particularly unified place.

Fundamentally, there are economic advantages to a common currency and umbrella trade agreements. Those advantages, however, are neither uniform nor universal. Thus, the Greeks blocking Macedonia by whatever means necessary.